Pete Reek wrote:The Lochend Church was demolished by McFadyen's and it was a great shame to see it being destroyed.
The windows did indeed go to New Zealand as the family that donated them to the church originally are now domiciled there I believe. They were made in Edinburgh and were very special, as everyone that saw them would I'm sure agree. The colours were very rich and vibrant and the detail was superb.They were by far the finest stained glass windows I have ever seen. A specialist firm came to town to remove them and crate them for shipping. Mick Martin from the firm W.F.M. was in charge of that side of the operation if my memory serves me right, and I am pretty certain that he was in fact an elder in the church. The "Campbelltown" they went to was spelt with the two L' I have used, and I think there is another one the same in Australia.
The pulpit and some of the pews were removed and taken to a new church being built somewhere in the north of Scotland. They were made from Pitch Pine as was a lot of stuff in Campbeltown it seems.
The bell was very difficult to remove from the tower owing to the condition of the stair leading up to it. As it neared the top there was no rail on the outside, so very scary. The figure of 80 ft up ( dare I say it?) rings a bell!! It had to be lowered using wire ropes and Tirfir's, and that itself was quite an acheivement.
A team of steeplejacks came in to do the specialised stuff on the actual steeple and Rab Brown from the chip shop went up with his video camera
and probably has the video of that to this day. Imagine the view? Rab came by pretty much daily to record the operation. Josie Brown also went up to the top with the steeplejacks.
The rest was knocked down by the local lads and was hard dirty work. The main church area was in itself very high, and I'm sure the marks made by my fingernails hanging on were left on the wood as we stripped the roof.
The stone from inside the main body of the church, columns etc was a very light coloured sandstone, and it was just dumped. I thought that perhaps it would make a nice fireplace, so I cut it into blocks the size of bricks and built my fireplace with them. I like to think that there is not another like it, but I know of maybe two built with the same stone, but random pieces rather than brick size.
Mr Jimmy Rioch, who was a Clerk of Works told me the exact quarry it came from, but for the life of me I can't remember which one.
It was a fine building, but without a substantial congregation it just couldn't survive.
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